Latest Lessons

These videos and audio files are bonus content related to the March 2015 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at the Guitar World Online Store.

This example demonstrates how to play the B minor pentatonic scale on the E and A strings using two notes on the E string and three notes on the A string. I typically play this using hammer-ons and pull-offs, but it is good to work up to speed with alternate picking as well. The rest of the lesson is based on this pattern, so be sure to get comfortable with this fingering before moving on.

These videos and audio files are bonus content related to the March 2015 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at the Guitar World Online Store.

First, the purpose of this column is to help you do more with your power chord progressions. If you think it’s over-simplified or over-complicated, then please consider the possibility that it’s simply mismatched with your skill level, before you comment. We also must consider the context of the information. Power chords are fairly simple.

These lessons are aimed at breaking through barriers that may be preventing you from improving. Some of these lessons will simply give you some good food for thought, and some will be more hands-on. Written to help you get past that plateau, these lessons are here to help you mix things up and keep your relationship with the guitar an interesting one.

Around the release of his eponymous debut solo album, Slash took the time out to show us how to play some of his favorite riffs, both new and old. In the Guitar World video below, Slash talks about writing the classic Guns N' Roses tune "Paradise City." He also shows you how to play the key parts of the Appetite for Destruction track.

The cascading waterfall of sound that is Eric Johnson's lead playing has captivated players and listeners for 30 years. In Johnson's ethereal soundscape, all the edges are smoothed away. Even the distinction between scales and arpeggios seems to blur. His patterns tumble imperceptibly through positions. And his limitless supply of sparsely voiced diatonic chord substitutions only enhances the vertigo.

We can always memorize new chords. That’s not hard. But what if we learned the structure and the music theory behind those chords first? What if we put the time into gaining a complete, academic understanding of what we’re playing? People shy away from music theory because it’s hard. And I’m not going to tell you otherwise.

One of the most common questions I get from my students and readers is, “I know what jazz chords to study, but how to I practice them in a practical, musical way?” To help answer this question, I’ve put together an exercise that uses all the inversions of any chords you are learning, while playing them in a common chord progression at the same time.